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One of Bill Gates' firms invested $80 million into nearly 25,000 acres of land west of Phoenix, Arizona to build a 'smart city' of the future. The proposed community, called Belmont, will have high-speed communications infrastructure, autonomous cars and data centers. In short, a hyper-connected place suitable for new companies to set up shop in.

Waymo is working on an autonomous taxi fleet, modeled after the pilot program it currently offers outside of Phoenix. The big difference here is that once fully launched, Waymo's service won't have a driver behind the wheel. Additionally, the company will up its fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans from 100 to 500. As you'd imagine, the entire ride-hailing process will be handled via a mobile app. While the initial service area will be limited to the Phoenix metro area, in a post on Medium, the company says eventually it will "cover a region that's larger than the size of Greater London." Waymo says that the public will be able to start taking autonomous rides "over the next few months" in the agricultural suburb, Chandler, Arizona.

This advice is drilled into our heads: The most effective way to smother harassment on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, email or any other online outlet is to ignore it. Don't give it attention. Don't legitimize the taunts, the name-calling, the threats. Don't give them more reason to come after you. Don't feed the trolls.

But that's online. In the real world, we're advised to do the opposite. We are compelled to stand up, speak out, and chant in the faces of people and ideas that would do us harm. When something unjust, tragic or deeply foreboding happens in America, the first instinct is to protest, make signs, march. Scream.

Uber is once again blurring the lines between independent contractor and employee. This time the ride-hailing service is offering insurance to its drivers as part of a pilot program in Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia according to regional publication PennLive. The injury-protection insurance is only active when a driver is logged into the app at the cost of $0.0375 per-mile. In at least a few of those markets, that will raise the per-mile price for passengers by $0.05. So, it seems the rates going up are to ensure that nothing comes out of the driver's pocket. Uber says that the increase was determined by how much the insurance would cost after taxes and fees.

Uber's freeze on self-driving car tests following the Arizona crash was very short-lived. The ridesharing firm tells Engadget that it's "resuming our development operations" in San Francisco as of this morning -- you should see test cars back on the streets very shortly. The Arizona and Pittsburgh cars are still idle as of this writing, but they're expected to go back into service soon.

Uber isn't taking any chances in the wake of its self-driving car accident in Tempe, Arizona. The company has suspended both its Arizona testing and its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania operations while it investigates what happened. The company has confirmed to Engadget that its vehicle was in self-driving mode at the time, but adds that there were no serious injuries on either side of the collision, and "no backseat passengers" in Uber's autonomous Volvo.

Uber's fleet of self-driving vehicles are now cruising the streets of Tempe, Arizona. After a spat with the California Department of Motor Vehicles in December, Uber moved its line of 16 custom, autonomous Volvo XC90 SUVs to Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed the company with open arms (and no extra restrictions on self-driving vehicles).

Intel plans to complete Fab 42, a semiconductor factory in Chandler, Arizona, with an investment of more than $7 billion over the next three to four years. At its peak, the factory will employ about 3,000 process engineers, equipment technicians, and facilities-support engineers and technicians. Fab 42 will produce 7 nanometer chips and is "expected to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world" -- whatever that means.

Remember how Apple salvaged that defunct sapphire plant in Arizona by turning it into a data center? That facility might soon become more useful... if not as useful as you might think. Apple has proposed expanding the Mesa location to make data server cabinets. While it's not initially clear why it's making the move, a Business Insider source claims that this is about consolidating data center production. The company normally builds the technology on-site at its data centers, the insider says, and it now wants to switch to a centralized model where it ships everything from Arizona.

Lucid Motors (formerly Atieva) has revealed that its upcoming EV, recently unveiled in Los Angeles, will be built in Casa Grande, Arizona. The Phoenix suburb will host the $700 million factory, which will start producing the first model by 2018. "Arizona stands to gain 2,000 new jobs by 2022," Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said. "Lucid has also made a commitment to training and hiring ... Arizona's veterans."

An Arizona teen is discovering why you should think very carefully about sharing exploits online: you don't know what people will do with them... or in some cases, that you're sharing the right exploits. Phoenix police have arrested 18-year-old Meetkumar Hitesbhai Desai on computer tampering charges after he publicly posted a version of iOS-based JavaScript attack that he thought would only deliver annoying pop-ups, but actually made bogus 911 calls. In the Phoenix region, there were so many hang-up calls (there were 1,849 link clicks in total) that there was the "potential danger" of emergency phone services going down, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says. California and Texas police saw call spikes, too.

Hackers outside of the United States attacked two state election databases in recent months and the FBI is warning voting officials across the country to bulk up security and investigate their own systems for similar malicious activity, Yahoo News reports. The twin hacks were outed in a "flash" alert from the FBI's Cyber Division. The alert does not say which states were targeted, though Yahoo reports that it likely refers to attacks in Arizona and Illinois.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed SB 1350 today, which will prevent cities in the state from banning short-term rental services like Airbnb or HoweAway. According to an earlier report from Forbes, Governor Ducey's end goal is to turn Arizona into The Sharing Economy State, which is a little different from the state's current motto of "God enriches."

Google is taking its self-driving cars to a fourth city in an expansion of its ongoing development. The latest location for testing is Phoenix, Arizona, which is significantly more arid than any city previously used as a proving ground.

Speaking to Reuters, Jennifer Haroon, Google's head of business operations for the self-driving car project, noted that the desert conditions will further the company's understanding of "how our sensors and cars handle extreme temperatures and dust in the air." Modified Lexus SUVs have already begun to map the Phoenix area, checking for street layouts, lane markers, traffic signals and curb heights.

Used to be that the only time your lithium-ion batteries changed their shape was when they were about to explode in an airliner cargo hold. But thanks to the ingenuity of an Arizona State University research team, future power packs could not only bend but stretch up to 150 percent of their original size while providing an uninterrupted stream of power. Their secret: the ancient Japanese art form of Kirigami. It's an offshoot of the more well-known Origami form that involves both folding and cutting the working material.

City officials from Paradise Valley, Arizona have reportedly set up an array of license plate readers, hidden within fake cacti no less, throughout the wealthy Phoenix suburb. Problem is, officials can't seem to explain if the devices are currently in use or why they even need the privacy-invading technology ion the first place. Fox 10 News broke the story earlier this week after residents began noticing that many of the town's cell-phone towers (disguised as cacti to blend into the surrounding scenery) were suddenly sporting the new plate readers. These readers scan the license plates of passing vehicles and compare them against a database of stolen and missing vehicles. If the plate matches an entry in the database, the device alerts authorities who then investigate.

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arizonacamerasksaz-tvlaw enforcementlicenseplatereaderparadisevalleyphoenixsecurityucberkeleySat, 09 May 2015 11:12:00 -040021|21181428https://www.tuaw.com/2015/02/02/remember-the-gt-advanced-sapphire-facility-its-going-to-be-a-c/https://www.tuaw.com/2015/02/02/remember-the-gt-advanced-sapphire-facility-its-going-to-be-a-c/https://www.tuaw.com/2015/02/02/remember-the-gt-advanced-sapphire-facility-its-going-to-be-a-c/#commentsCNBC reported today that the GT Advanced plant in Mesa, Arizona, originally tasked with the job of making sapphire for screens, buttons, and other bits and pieces of Apple gear, is now going to be taken over by the company that allegedly caused GT Advanced to go out of business -- Apple.

Apple will be spending a cool US$2 billion to transform the factory into a data center that will act as a command center for the company's worldwide data network.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey took to Twitter to tout the investment and the jobs (about 150 full-time Apple employees, about 300-500 engineering and construction jobs) that will benefit the state. Ducey has had a good week, with his state playing host to Super Bowl XLIX yesterday and this announcement coming today.

I couldn't even begin to explain why, but I'm fairly certain my comrade-in-arms Anne Stickney insisted on making our BlizzCon road trip an annual event exclusively so she could get a glimpse of a 104-year-old fruitcake. Our itinerary went through numerous iterations leading up to the start of our journey. The fruitcake was struck from the list countless times, but she managed to worm it back in there every single time. At some point, a guy accepts his fate and travels cross-country to see an old, crusty fruitcake. What can you do?

I'll let it slide, though. Day 2 of our road trip also included Goodsprings, Nevada, which I insisted on visiting from the beginning. Anyone who has played Fallout: New Vegas will recognize the location: it's the game's first Vegas locale. And, as it turns out, this supposedly-haunted town and its Pioneer Saloon may be recognizable to even those who have never touched a video game. It's been a standby location throughout modern pop culture, its Hollywood breakthrough predating Fallout by many years.

Many green energy sources only generate power in a narrow range of conditions. Solar panels won't work when it's dark, for instance, and wind turbines are useless when everything is still. If Solar Wind Energy Tower has its way, though, we'll soon get clean electricity around the clock. It recently received permission to build a tower in San Luis, Arizona that produces power through hot air downdrafts; water injected at the top of the tower cools the desert winds, dragging them toward turbines at the bottom. Since it's almost always hot in the area, the plant should run all day and night for much of the year. An ideal summer day could have it churning out a healthy 1,250 megawatts per hour.

Tesla's direct-to-customer sales model just hit another big roadblock. New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission has voted in favor of a rule banning direct car sales, effectively kicking Tesla out of the state as of this April. For those keeping score, this is the EV maker's third such defeat, following similar moves by Arizona and Texas -- while Tesla won a legislative battle to go dealer-free in North Carolina, it appears to be losing the war. Not surprisingly, the company is furious. It accuses Governor Chris Christie of not just reneging on a promise to delay the rule for the sake of debate, but of speeding things up to please dealerships that fear real competition. Whether that's an accurate representation or just corporate bluster, the ban will undoubtedly hurt Garden State residents who want a wider selection of eco-friendly rides.

Apple has confirmed to CNBC that is has asked Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) to veto the so called religious freedom bill SB 1062, which was passed along party lines in the Republican-controlled Arizona House and Senate. The bill would allow any person or company in Arizona to refuse service to anyone based on the refuser's religious beliefs.

Opponents of the bill say it would promote discrimination by allowing people to refuse to serve or do business with certain groups -- such as same-sex couples. Needless to say the bill has proved highly controversial and Apple, a company with a strong pro-civil rights history, is just the latest among big companies to ask Governor Brewer to veto the bill. Apple of course now has specific interests in Arizona. As CNBC reports:

Apple appears to be the latest firm to join other corporates urging Brewer to veto the bill, which supporters say will protect religious freedom and critics say could allow companies to use religious beliefs to discriminate against the gay and lesbian community.

The request from Apple comes as it is preparing to open a new sapphire glass manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona and that is expected to create more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

Apple confirmed to CNBC that it has asked the Arizona governor to veto the religious freedom bill. It re-issued a statement released when it announced the new plant.

Besides Apple, other corporations such as Marriott and American Airlines have asked Brewer to veto the bill. Meanwhile, the NFL has stated it reserves the right to make changes to the location of the Super Bowl next year, which is currently to be held in Arizona, if the bill passes.

AZCentral is reporting that the Gilbert Public School Board voted to approve a tax break for Apple, thereby clearing the way for Apple to open up its planned sapphire-manufacturing plant in Mesa, Ariz. Under terms of the agreement, Apple will buy the land, pay all expenses needed to build out the factory and then lease it back to GT Advanced, which will oversee the manufacturing operation.

The fate of the high-profile deal potentially worth hundreds of jobs seemed to hang in the balance, with the school district being the last of eight governing entities needed to approve a property reclassification that would entitle the premier tech company to a tax break.

News of Apple's plans to build a sapphire-manufacturing plant, in conjunction with GT Advanced, first surfaced earlier this month. Apple currently uses sapphire to protect the camera lens on the iPhone along with the the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5s. The scope of Apple's deal with GT Advanced, however, has led to many to wonder just what Apple might need all that extra sapphire for.

As for specifics regarding the tax breaks afforded to Apple, AZ Central indicates that the Arizona Commerce Authority "offered a US$10 million grant and other incentives to Apple to bring a high-tech manufacturing plant" to Mesa.

All told, Apple's foray into the sapphire-manufacturing business in Arizona will create an estimated 1,300 construction jobs along with 700 full-time manufacturing jobs.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

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Apple has announced its plans to open a new facility in Arizona to manufacture sapphire materials, according to PocketLint. The Mesa, Ariz., complex will be built and run in partnership with GT Advanced, which is helping Apple manufacture the sapphire. Apple currently uses sapphire in its camera lenses and the Touch ID sensor in various iOS devices.

Acknowledging the new factory after it was reported in the news earlier in the day, Apple told PocketLint:

"We are proud to expand our domestic manufacturing initiative with a new facility in Arizona, creating more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction. This new plant will make components for Apple products and it will run on 100% renewable energy from day one, as a result of the work we are doing with SRP to create green energy sources to power the facility."

The factory will be Apple's second in the United States, coming after Apple opened up a plant in Fort Worth, Texas that will be manufacturing the Mac Pro.